Sport for young Kiwis: a National priority

Thank you for being here today. I'd like to
acknowledge my caucus colleagues Murray McCully, Paula
Bennet, and Tim Groser.

In recent months my speeches
have focused on my vision for New Zealand, National's
economic plan, our plans for fighting crime, for increasing
education standards, for improving our health system,and
other key issues. Those are very important themes and I will
continue to address them in the next few months.

Today,
though, I'm going to talk specifically about sport, and the
vital role it can play for our young people.

This is
a subject I feel strongly about and that I raised in my
first State of the Nation speech as National Party Leader.

Most New Zealanders would probably say this is a
sporting nation. And though that may be open to debate, what
is not debatable is the fact that if New Zealanders can
increase participation in sport then we have the capacity to
significantly improve their lives.

The results, in
terms of healthier, fitter people, who are less of a cost on
our health system, are obvious.

Less visible is the
improvement in our attitudes, our spirit, and our culture
that an increased engagement in sport can bring.

I
think playing sport is an important part of growing up in
New Zealand. Kids who are out there playing rugby or netball
or soccer or cricket, or any other sport, aren't just
getting fitter and healthier. They are learning about
teamwork and co-operation, about playing fair, and about
winning and losing.

Regular involvement in organised
sport is habit-forming. The kids who play sport through
their childhood and teen years are much more likely to be
the adults who keep fit in later years.

I also see
participation in sport as one of the ways in which we can
improve our national attitude to competition.

I want
Kiwis to see themselves as a nation of winners, prepared to
do what it takes to compete with the rest of the world and
win.

I want to put the word "winning" back into the
national vocabulary. And I think we can make a significant
difference to troubled young people if we can get more of
them playing sport.

Those involved in youth justice
tell me that young people who are in organised sport are
much less likely to get mixed up in criminal offending.
Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has said that 'a
kid in sport stays out of court'.

For kids with
difficult home lives, sport gives them something
constructive to do, to fill the void they have in their
spare time. Otherwise, the temptation is to fill this void
by hanging around the streets, drifting into drugs and
getting into trouble.

For that reason alone, a greater
investment in getting young people playing sport is
justified.

I am not going to talk to you today about
National's policy on high performance sport - although that
is important. Having medal winners as role models is a
critical part of motivating young people to participate
themselves.

National has been doing considerable
thinking about the area of high performance sport, and we
will have something to say closer to the election.

For
today, let me say that as a government, we intend to take
very seriously our responsibility to support those who
participate at the very top end of international
competition. That's because National views their success as
important, not just to sport, but to our country as a
whole.

Kids' declining participation in
sport

Today I want to focus on where it all begins:
with Kiwi kids.

It's no great revelation that New
Zealand school children could do with a bit more sport in
their lives. Research shows that one in three of them are
obese or overweight. While more than a third of them are
inactive.

I talk to a lot of parents who are worried
that their child is, or might end up in, one of those
unhealthy categories. They tell me their kids would rather
sit in front of a computer than practice down at the nets.

That's a real worry. It's something our country has
to change.

Labour's approach

Labour's response
to this emerging problem has been to create a large number
of strategies, interdepartmental working groups, social
marketing plans, and initiatives.

From this tide of
paper and bureaucracy has emerged a series of programmes and
campaigns. I've counted at least eight. Be it 'Push Play',
'Mission On' or 'Healthy Eating, Healthy Action', every
campaign has come with its own 'brand', its own series of
meetings, its own action plans.

Many of these
programmes have been based on expensive advertising
campaigns telling parents things like 'make sure your child
eats fruit and vegetables.' As if that makes it easier to
convince your five-year-old to eat her broccoli!

True,
in among the marketing-speak there's been a few sensible
ideas. Ideas like putting water fountains and sports
co-ordinators in schools. It's hard to argue with those
ideas. It's also not surprising that those ideas didn't
come from advisors sitting in Wellington. They came from
schools and sports clubs at the coalface.

And for every
good idea there have been at least two fairly dubious
ideas.

I'm thinking, for example, of the 'Mission On'
website that the Prime Minister launched in February. Kids
who log on to this website are encouraged to play a series
of animated computer games.

One of these games is Cool
Moves. It involves a child using six keys on the keyboard
to move an animated character through a series of hip-hop
moves on screen. All of this while sitting in their chair
and twiddling the fingers of their left hand. How that can
possibly be seen as making kids more active is beyond
me.

Other ideas have been bureaucratic in the extreme.
For example, there's a 'Mission On' initiative to get
Wellington officials to develop nutrition and activity plans
for their workplaces. Work on these plans has apparently
started with baseline questionnaires, organisational audits,
and evaluations of those questionnaires and audits.

I'm
sure all of this seems very worthy to someone tucked away in
an office in Wellington. But it's a very long way from kids
getting a ball and kicking it around a field or throwing it
through a hoop. It's a classic Labour case of resources
being tied up in the back office and not making it through
to the front line.

A National Government will have a
much more straight-forward approach.

We will focus on a
simple goal: getting more school kids regularly
participating in sports teams and clubs. We will meet this
goal by working with the community organisations that are
already in regular contact with these kids - schools and
sports clubs.

The role of schools

Schools are the
catchment zone in which we can ensure all young New
Zealanders are introduced to participation in
sport.

Students get involved in school sport in three
main ways.

1. Activity as part of the school
day

The first is as a casual part of the school day,
whether it's kids throwing a Frisbee around at lunchtime or
going for a nature walk during science class. Those things
are great and schools should encourage that kind of
activity.

I'm not convinced, though, that the
government should spend a whole lot of money telling schools
to do more of this. I can't see why, for example, taxpayer
dollars were spent on delivering schools an 'Active Schools'
CD with "seven funky tracks for classroom use" and a CD Rom
with "interactive ideas and options for physical activity".

I think teachers are smart enough to encourage
physical activity without using that sort of guff. I'd
suggest that if we really want to help schools get kids
running around at lunchtime then we should apply some common
sense and make sure they have decent sports equipment.

2. Physical Education Classes

The second way
schools encourage kids' sport is through designated physical
education classes.

The Government requires schools,
particularly primary schools, to give priority to regular
physical activity for their students as part of their core
teaching curriculum. That's as it should be and National
will support that requirement. We will work with schools to
ensure physical education classes are valued and of a high
standard.

But, again, I'm not convinced that schools
should be forced to fill the school day with more hours of
PE. Schools have limited time to teach their students and
every extra hour of PE has an opportunity cost.

National does not want to weigh schools down with
ever-more teaching responsibilities to fulfil during the
course of the school day. So we won't be advocating an
increase in core physical education requirements.

3.
Extra-curricular sports teams and clubs

Instead,
National wants schools to encourage more of their students
to take part in organised sports teams and clubs outside
school hours.

Schools are a unique gateway for
kids wanting to get involved in a sports team or club.
Sometimes, particularly at secondary school, those teams are
run by the school itself. Historically, these teams have
played an important role in the character and pride of many
of New Zealand's schools.

But there are real
challenges confronting this kind of school sport in 2008.
Factors like dramatically increased paperwork, a falling
number of male teachers, and changing teacher attitudes to
managing and coaching school sporting teams have made it
more challenging for schools to deliver sport for
students.

Some schools are able to pay for sports
co-ordinators and coaches. Others are constantly struggling
to find the coaches, referees, and volunteers needed to
support a range of teams in the school, let alone promote
those teams to students. This creates a barrier between
kids and sport. It's time that barrier came
down.

National will, over time, give schools additional
resources to ensure more students can take part in
extra-curricula organised sport.

Unlike Labour, we
won't make schools apply to multiple funds and fill in
copious forms to access these resources. And we won't tell
them how best to spend the money.

We will, instead,
give them sports funding to use as they see fit - be it
buying equipment and uniforms, hiring sports co-ordinators,
or paying for service contracts with local sports clubs. We
will simply ask schools to ensure that any extra dollars we
give result in more students actually taking part in
organised sport.

The role of sports clubs

But
schools aren't, and never should be, the only players in the
delivery of sporting programmes. Even large secondary
schools can have difficulty providing the whole range of
sporting options students might be interested in.

Instead, the school's role can be to give a friendly
shove in the right direction - perhaps by introducing
students to a local squash, swimming, or gymnastics club, or
encouraging them to join the local league or hockey team.

At primary school level, in particular, many schools
just don't have enough students and teachers to support a
range of sports teams.

This is where sports clubs
have an important role to play. New Zealand's sports clubs
occupy a proud place in the history of our country. They
have long-standing traditions and extensive networks in
their communities. They bring together people of different
ages, abilities and walks of life.

In many sports codes
and many schools, clubs are the chief mechanism by which
sports teams are engaged in local competitions.

Despite
this vital role, many of our sports clubs are struggling.
They are beset with challenges - not just the constant need
to raise funds, but the need to find coaches,
administrators, and other officials required to keep sport
alive.

Some clubs are able to cover funding shortfalls
by leaning more heavily on their communities for help or
raising subs. Others simply don't have that
option.

For many families, taking part in a sports club
can be prohibitively expensive: football boots, netball
uniforms, and transport all cost money. It can be hard to
find a coach to take the team. In my own electorate, and
around the country, many people come up to me with the same
observation.

A couple of years ago, after-school sport
for children in Otahuhu collapsed. The suburb's five
decile-1 primary schools stopped organising sports at a
local recreation centre because families couldn't afford the
fee increase from $2 a head for each game to $4-$5 a head.

Too many kids in our poorest communities are being
excluded from sport because their parents can't afford it.
These are the kids who need it most. I am determined to turn
that around. We can't hope to see sport thrive in this
country without healthier sports clubs.

National will
ensure that more of the government's sport spending makes it
through to the sports clubs at the front line.

National
will be flexible in its thinking about how that funding is
best delivered and distributed. Our guiding priority will
be to make sure the dollars spent result in a measurable
increase in the number of kids taking part in regular
sporting activity.

In some parts of New Zealand,
regional sports trusts may be a significant player in this
process. We do understand the important role they play.
However, we will be asking the trusts, too, to buy into our
central strategy of moving as much resource as possible to
the places where sport is actually played.

New funding
priorities

The two pledges I have made today will
require taxpayer investment. National will make that
investment because we believe getting more Kiwis playing
sport will support the well-being of our families and will
reinforce the values we believe in.

You might ask
"where will the money come from?" I am confident the funding
can be found from within budgets currently tied up in
anti-obesity and physical activity promotion
programmes.

A National Government will bring about a
significant shift in emphasis as to where this government
funding is spent.

For Labour, fighting obesity is a
complex business. It's a business that seems to be spawning
an industry of policy analysts, communications managers,
human resource consultants, and book-keepers, all built
around highly expensive advertising and promotional
programmes.

Examples of poor priorities

Every
dollar we spend in those areas is a dollar we could spend on
codes, schools, and clubs that have bats, balls, sports
facilities, and gear ready to ensure more New Zealanders can
take part in sport.

If I am Prime Minister, I will give
my Ministers a clear sense of priorities about how these
funds should be spent: I want more sports coaches and
equipment and fewer advisors and reports.

My team
has already had a careful look to see what scope for savings
exists. The results, even given the limited amount of
publicly available information, reveal a skewed sense of
priority.

The first thing that is striking is the
number of overlapping programmes and initiatives. It's hard
to understand why we need at least eight different
government programmes in pursuit of what are essentially two
goals - encouraging people to eat healthier and exercise
more.

The other thing that is striking is how little
of the budgeted millions actually manage to flow through the
bureaucracy and into the schools and community organisations
working with young people.

Take Sport and Recreation
New Zealand (Sparc). This is the government agency charged
with promoting physical activity and supporting elite
athletes. Last year, Sparc had 86 full-time staff. Fourteen
of those staff were paid more than $150,000 a year, while 47
of them earned more than $100,000 a year.

You would
hope those staff were busy putting funds directly into
regional sports trusts, clubs, and national sporting bodies.
But no, almost a third of the money Sparc receives - $35
million in fact - never makes it outside the Wellington
office.

Instead it gets spent on internal costs
associated with running Sparc, and on supporting and
developing programmes and social marketing
campaigns.

One big cost for example is the Sparc
website. This year Sparc will spend $5.5 million on its
website. And between 2006 and 2010, Sparc will spend $11.5
million on its website. That's enough to give almost $6,000
worth of sporting equipment to every primary school in New
Zealand. Or to buy a decent cricket set for every family in
Waitakere City.

Even the money that is designated for
sports clubs doesn't come in the form of direct grants. Some
of it is, instead, spent on "capability development". Sparc
kindly provides, for example, reports for people in sports
clubs to spend their spare time reading. These 'capability
resources' include a web link to purchase a book on "Winning
the Red Tape Game". That book is available to clubs at a
cost of $44.

Sparc also commissions research. In 2006,
for example, they funded a study into volunteers. This
report came up with a series of recommendations that can
only be described as patronising, stating, for example, that
"Organisations with Maori sport volunteers should value this
group orientation and take note of the need to build
relationships", and "Organisations should not underestimate
the power of asking someone to volunteer. Included in an
organisation's recruitment strategy should be an 'asking'
strategy".

Sparc certainly has a fondness for
strategies. They have, for example, invested financially in
the development of 33 regional and district strategies,
numbering 1,330 pages in total.

Much of Sparc's
funding is delivered through a lengthy selection process
designed to pick projects that "meet Sparc's vision". While
there's no doubt some of this funding ends up in worthy
initiatives, I'm sure people in sports clubs can think of
better things to do than constantly filling in funding
applications for Sparc.

That passion for form-filling
is reflected in other government agencies - the Ministry of
Health's $32 million 'Healthy Eating, Healthy Action'
programme, for example. Much of this funding is distributed
to district health boards to spend on physical activity and
nutrition programmes, a huge amount of which is soaked up in
project management, communications, and
co-ordination.

By the time the money has gone through
the merry-go-round it can end up being spent on tiny
projects such as a $1,300 worm farm, garden and puzzles for
a Wellington school, $5,000 for café equipment for a
Manukau school, or $4,000 for a dishwasher and kitchen
equipment for a school in Northland.

It's hard to see
why projects of that type should require an exhaustive
application and review process. And it's also hard to see
how they will actually prevent kids from becoming obese
adults.

An incoming National Government will have
a look at all these programmes, regardless of which
portfolio technically funds them, to ensure we get the
balance right between funding promotional programmes and
telling people to lead healthier lifestyles, and funding
actual sports organisations with actual facilities at which
sport is actually being played.

It's clear that with a
firm sense of priorities, and a disciplined approach to
taxpayer funds, National will be able to free up meaningful
additional funding for schools and sports clubs.

We
must all play our part

I am not trying to signal here
that an incoming National Government can or will solve all
of the problems of schools, clubs, or sports codes. Clubs,
regional sports trusts, and other sports organisations will
have to play their part in meeting the challenges ahead.

We must improve the efficiency of our sporting
expenditure through a willingness to look at amalgamations
and the sharing of facilities. New partnerships between
sporting organisations, schools and local authorities will
need to be considered if we are to get the best sporting
bang for our buck.

Local and regional councils will
have a role, especially in ensuring communities have
adequate facilities where sport can be played and
practised.

Parents have an important responsibility
here, too. Whether it's encouraging their child to play
sport, helping them get to the game, coaching a team, or
asking how the game went, their involvement can make a huge
difference to young people.

Kids' sport relies on a
base of adults prepared to volunteer their time and
expertise. That spirit of volunteerism should be supported
and encouraged. I would like to see more Kiwis putting their
hand up for a role in the sporting lives of our young
people. And I'd like to see further business support for
sports codes, and teams.

I hope National's leadership
on this issue, combined with our suite of charity policies,
will encourage more organisations and individuals to donate
their resources and time to kids' sport.

Conclusion

But even after all this has been done,
it's clear that government has a significant funding role to
ensure more Kiwi kids get hooked into sport.

Labour's
approach to these issues has been top-down,
government-knows-best. Their programmes have been flush
with bureaucracy and patronising messages. They want to
regulate and control.

National will take a far more
practical approach. We will focus sporting dollars where
they make the difference - at the front line in schools and
sports clubs.

We will, over time, give schools
additional resources for ensuring more students can take
part in extra-curricula organised sport. And we will ensure
that more of the government's sport spending makes it
through to the sports clubs at the front line.

We will
do this by carefully re-prioritising government funds
currently dedicated to a host of bureaucratic anti-obesity
campaigns.

In doing so we will ensure that more Kiwi
kids take part in sport. And that is something we think all
Kiwis will be happy to support.

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